The Best Budget Color Laser All-in-One Printers Under $500

Gone are the days when one of these models would have cost you more than a grand. These multifunction printers cost less than half that, and you'll be surprised how able they are.

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Multifunction color laser printers, or all-in-one (AIO) printers, can be an invaluable tool for small offices where printing color graphics is a necessity. These flexible machines also allow you to copy, scan, and sometimes even fax from a single device, saving you a ton of space and cash.

You might expect eye-popping prices for these do-it-all machines—and not long ago, that would have been true. Recently, we've seen the price of a few color laser AIOs drop below $500. The three printers here all fall below that sweet threshold. (At $349, the HP LaserJet Pro 100 is the least expensive of this bunch.)

Basing a printer purchase on price alone, however, can be costly to your office in non-monetary ways. You'll want to do a bit of homework first. Most laser AIOs come with certain office-centric features, such as built-in duplexing and an automatic document feeder, but you'll want to delve a bit deeper into the feature list before making a decision. For example, these three models are all light-duty machines meant for smaller offices that don't churn out thousands of pages per month. Due to their budget prices, they also aren't fancy. (You're not going to find a touch-screen LCD or advanced security options, for example.)

One of the most important features to look at is duty cycle. (That's the most pages a printer is rated to print out in a month.) You'll want a printer that can keep up with your needs. Being that these are budget models, you won't find the super-high ratings you would find in a higher-end (and pricier) laser model such as the the Xerox Phaser 6128MFP. But if your office doesn't churn out thousands of pages a month, these AIOs should do the trick.

You'll also want to pay close attention to maximum duty cycle versus recommended duty cycle numbers. The maximum duty cycle is the absolute most pages you should subject your printer to in any month, while the recommended rating is the number you should limit your printer to month in, month out. Even though a printer may have a high maximum rating, hitting this number month after month will stress it beyond what it was built to do. In these low-cost models, the highest maximum duty cycle you'll find is 30,000 pages, but these printers' recommended duty cycles are much lower. (For example, the HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fnw has a maximum duty cycle of 30,000 pages, but a recommended duty cycle of 1,500 pages.)

Another important feature to consider is paper capacity. All three printers in our roundup have paper capacities of 150 sheets, which is fine considering their relatively low duty cycles. But if that low a capacity might cramp your printing style, these may not be the models for you.

If you'll be printing from more than one computer, you'll want to make sure your laser AIO is networkable. Insist on an Ethernet port for setting up a wired network connection. (All of the models in this roundup come with this port.) All three can also support a Wi-Fi connection for wireless printing.

Also, pay close attention to each printer's cost of consumables, meaning how much its toner and drum units will cost. A printer may have a low initial purchase price but end up costly in the long run if it requires expensive toner. As for the drum or drums, you typically won't need to replace them more than once or twice in the lifetime of a printer, but the sticker shock can be big (especially for color lasers, some of which have four discrete drum units). As is usually the case with budget printers, the cost of consumables for these printers is on the high side.

One more thing to point out: One of the printers below, the Dell 1355cnw, is not a "true" color laser printer, but a color LED printer. LED printers, often dubbed "laser-class," are as fast as laser printers and produce similar document quality. The difference between an LED-based machine and a laser one centers strictly around what happens inside: An LED array, rather than a laser beam, draws the page image onto the print drum. Among other advantages, LED technology uses less power and costs less to manufacture.

The budget models you see here allow small and home offices that otherwise could not afford a color laser AIO to get sharp printing, scanning, and copying at laser-quick speeds. But they're meant for offices that don't print thousands of pages a month. If your office prints on the light side, though, one of these units is sure to keep your color-printing needs satiated.

Our Verdict: This capable laser-class AIO delivers impressive-looking output. It's fine for small offices that need color printing, though its speeds and pricey toner make it best for printing in modest volumes.